“Zahra, you may allow Audric to wake now,” Rielle choked out, her bare feet slapping through the cold mud. “Go to him. Tell him everything I have said, once he is ready to hear it.”

Zahra said nothing, but a cold stream of air kissed the back of Rielle’s neck, and then the wraith was gone.

“Tell me what you see, Evyline,” Rielle breathed.

“I see golden light streaming across the sky,” Evyline replied. “Instead of jagged bolts, like lightning, it is petals, vast and pulsing. They meet, they break apart, they meet again.”

“And I see Audric,” said Rielle, her voice catching on each word. The empirium was a canvas vast and unending, shapes swirling from ground to sky. She read everything written upon it. “He has awoken. He is running through our rooms, looking for me. He’s calling my name over and over. Eliana…” She burst into tears. In her life, she had loved fiercely, but never so perfectly as this. “Eliana is awake and crying. Audric is… He’s calling for the guards. He’s holding Eliana against his chest, shouting my name again. She’s screaming in his ear, and he’s going out onto the terrace. He sees my light. He knows what I’ve done.”

“Please don’t, child,” said Garver. “Don’t look. It will only hurt you to watch them.”

Rielle fell to her knees into a soft rise of mud. Above her towered trees golden with the last flush of autumn, and above them, the pine-dark foothills of Mount Taléa.

“Get back,” she cried out, pushing at Garver’s chest. She grabbed Evyline’s hand, squeezed once, then shoved her away as well. She waited until they had shrunk back into the trees, both of them standing on a ridge piled high with rocks. Below them in the mud, she shook on her hands and knees. Gulping airlessly, swallowing against the storm rising within her. It was time, and yet she knew not where to begin.

breathe

let go

Rielle stared at her hands in the mud. Pale and small, surrounded by shadows.

we rise

The girl crouched before her—her child self, bright-eyed and smiling. Barefoot, white gown fluttering at her ankles, skinny wrists and wild dark hair.

“Come with me now,” the girl said, entirely kind, her voice tender. “There is so much more for us to do.”

The world glittered with diamonds. Blistering pain knocked at Rielle’s temples, but when she reached for the girl’s hand, some of the terrified knots in her shoulders unwound, and at the edges of her vision, roses of shimmering gold light blossomed by the millions. Light burst from her in a thousand brilliant streams, and in the last moments before it consumed her, she saw too many things to name. But some things she saw, and knew, and held close.

She saw the shattered city that had been her home, its seven temples alight with candles of mourning, the lake glittering like a smile around its wall.

In the Sunderlands, the Gate’s light groaned and spun, spiraling into itself, a cyclone of violet and gold, until there was nothing left of the door that had once been. Only two great gray stones, the air between them entirely ordinary and shivering with sea winds.

In the high, cold mountains of Borsvall, King Ilmaire slept beside his new husband, Leevi of the Kammerat, the dragon-speaker. The capital of Styrdalleen was once more the winged city it had been in the First Age, for dragons large and small perched on every tower, great wings folded, tirelessly watching the night for enemies. At a wall of white stone overlooking the shore stood Ingrid Lysleva, commander of the army and the king’s beloved sister. She looked with narrowed eyes across the Northern Sea toward the distant island of the Gate, where strangely lit clouds turned slowly, like no storm she had ever seen.

In the burnished city of Genzhar, in a palace of scarlet and gold, the young queen, Obritsa, looked coldly upon the traitorous magisters who had sold her city’s children to Corien in exchange for places of honor in the new angelic world. The executioner lifted his sword, but at the last moment, Obritsa stopped him, sparing the magisters’ lives. She knelt before them as they wept on her hands, and then, smiling a hard smile, told them something Rielle could not hear.

In the city of Quelbani, the pearl of its country, its shattered streets painted pale by the moon, the princess Kamayin Asdalla read by the light of candles in her mothers’ room. Behind her, they slept in their broad white bed, their faces soft, their hands entwined. Kamayin looked up from her novel, bare feet on the window sill, and absently tapped her toes. She left her book on her lap and turned to the table beside her, added several notes to the paper at her elbow. At the top of the page was a question, circled twice: How do we move forward from here?

And on a small terrace outside the finest suite of rooms in Baingarde, the king of Celdaria cradled his daughter against his chest, watching the horizon bloom bright with farewell.

A Beginning and an End

   “My darling daughter, my little one. You may not understand what I have done for a long time. You may be angry with me, you may hate me, you may grow up and be indifferent to me. But whatever you feel, know that I have loved you desperately, and that’s why I had to leave you. You will have a life now, and though the world has changed, it will be safe for a time. You will be frightened, some days. You’re allowed to be frightened. But you are stronger than any flame that burns. Watch over your father. Hold him close to your heart. Cherish your friends. Love yourself and the power I have given to you. Watch the skies and feel the sun on your skin. Swim the rivers and play games in the shadows. In every moment, in every blade of grass, in every path untraveled—there I will be, beside you, and there I will always be. My Eliana. My brave girl. There you are, beginning.”

—Letter from Rielle Courverie, late queen of Celdaria, to her daughter, Eliana Courverie, princess of Celdaria and heir to the throne of Katell, dated November 11, Year 1000 of the Second Age

Five Years Later

Eliana sat on her favorite stool in her favorite corner of her favorite place in all the world—except for her bedroom, and her father’s bedroom, and her grandmother’s sitting room with the godsbeasts painted on the ceiling, and the quiet, cool catacombs, where the pretty statue of her mother marked an empty tomb.

Besides all of those places, Garver’s shop was her favorite. She liked the way it smelled of plants and tonics, a sour but clean sort of smell that woke up her nose, and she liked the herbs in their neat little glass jars, the tonics and ointments labeled in Garver’s precise letters. She liked the tidy worktables and how Garver had sanded them smooth, how the air grew steamy when they were brewing new mixtures to be bottled and put away.

There was the cheerful garden of flowers and herbs outside the windows, and now, in early summer, it was bursting with color. Sometimes Atheria’s shadow would pass across the window as she flew about, searching the skies for lunch. There was the bright silver bell hanging at the door, and there was the broom Garver kept in the corner, and the kettle of tea warming over the fire.